Coronavirus: IIT Roorkee startup develops hand sanitizer

Two students of IIT Roorkee have prepared over 150 litres (1500 bottles) of herbal hand sanitizer. It is their attempt to reduce the spread of coronavirus pandemic in the country. Heal-agnostics Innovations Pvt. Ltd., a start-up incubated at TIDES, IIT Roorkee, will distribute the hand sanitizer free of cost. With the support of IIT Roorkee administration, the startup has received guidance from Dr Indranil Lahiri and Dr Debrupa Lahiri. It is an initiative of Siddharth Sharma, research scholar of Centre of Nanotechnology, IIT Roorkee. He is also the co-founder of Heal-agnostic Innovations. He was assisted by Vaibhav Jain, research scholar of the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering.

The sanitizer consists of 80 per cent isopropanol/ ethanol and comprises antibacterial, antifungal, anti-inflammatory herbal ingredients. Apart from this, it also works as an excellent moisturizer. The product has been created as per the recommendations of the World Health Organization and the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). According to Siddharth, the product would be useful to the entire community by promoting basic hygiene. Dr Lahiri stated that it was a huge task that would not have accomplished without the hard work of some students. He further stated that to make effort successful, Dibyanshu Lahiri, Anshu Dubey, Souvik Ghosh, Nitam Kumar, Vishal Panwar, Satish Jaiswal, Kanike Rajesh have worked day and night for three days continuously.

The sanitizer bottles are being distributed to the office of Dean SRIC. The office is operating as a nodal centre for distribution among the campus community. IIT Roorkee is also planning to construct a refilling station at an appropriate location in the campus. Heal-agnostic Innovations is working to support this plan.

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